Preface to Lyrical Ballads
By William Wordsworth

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by John O'Brien, Christiana Ogbolu

Sources

London : T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1800Our text is built from the Project Gutenberg transcription.Page images are taken from the Internet Archive digital surrogate of the sectond edition, published in 1800.,

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

Wordsworth, William. "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" . Lyrical Ballads, T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1800 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Wordsworth/wordsworth-preface. Accessed: 2025-02-17T08:41:38.737Z

Title Page LYRICAL BALLADS,

WITH
OTHER POEMS.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

BY W. WORDSWORTH.
Quam nihil ad genium, Papiniane, tuum!^epigraphepigraphA translation of this Latin sentence would be something like "How worthless this would be to your taste, Papinian!" What does Wordsworth mean by this? It's not really clear, and the line seems almost like an inside joke. Papinian was a Roman judge who was remembered as an expert on Roman law, so there's some kind of joke about how the poems that follow in effect go against the rules. It's just possible that there's a joke here, too, on the the poet Alexander Pope, the greatest English poet of the eighteenth century, whose "taste" would clearly be challenged by Wordsworth and Coleridge's poetry.
VOL. I
SECOND EDITION.

LONDON
PRINTED FOR T.N. LONGMAN AND O.REES, PATERNOSTER-ROW,
BY BIGGS AND CO. BRISTOL
1800. PREFACE.

The First Volume of these Poems has already been submitted to general perusal. It was published, as an experiment which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a Poet may rationally endeavour to impart.

I had formed no very inaccurate estimate of the probable effect of those Poems: I flattered myself that they who should be pleased with them would read them with more than common pleasure: and on the other hand I was well aware that by those who should dislike them they would be read with more than common dislike. The result has differed from my expectation in this only, that I have pleased a greater number, than I ventured to hope I should please.

For the sake of variety and from a consciousness of my own weakness I was induced to request the assistance of a Friend, who furnished me with the Poems of the ANCIENT MARINER, the FOSTER-MOTHER'S TALE, the NIGHTINGALE, the DUNGEON, and the Poem entitled LOVE. I should not, however, have requested this assistance, had I not believed that the poems of my Friend would in a great measure have the same tendency as my own, and that,

Page Title Page

Footnotes

Chaucer_ It is worth while here to observe that the affecting parts of Chaucer are almost always expressed in language pure and universally intelligible even to this day. [Wordsworth's note]

Poetry_I here use the word "Poetry" (though against my own judgment) as opposed to the word Prose, and synonomous with metrical composition. But much confusion has been introduced into criticism by this contradistinction of Poetry and Prose, instead of the more philosophical one of Poetry and Science. The only strict antithesis to Prose is Metre. [Wordsworth's note]